“Mamma Mia!”: Ebony Electrifies Sayles in Winter Show

February 1, 2013

By Noelani Kirschner

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Mamma mia, what a show! Carleton’s student-run, student-choreographed dance troop performed their Winter Show last weekend on Friday and Saturday night, livening up the great space in Sayles and drawing lots of hoots and hollers from the audience.

Especially in the dreary winter months, the colorful fun of Ebony is always highly anticipated to provide a bright spot for all students, either to participate in or to watch.

“I think [the show] went really well,” said Cassandra Iroz ’14, an Ebony enthusiast who was in five dances. “This was my 8th term participating in Ebony II and it just keeps getting better.”

This term, the overall theme revolved around moms: the opening number was “Mamma Mia!” by Abba and the final group dance was a mash-up of songs featuring moms, like “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne. The theme elicited laughs and played off of Ebony’s silly tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

And the always-popular “Man Dance”, which was performed halfway through the show, was choreographed to “Macho Man” by Village People and featured the majority of the male dancers in Ebony. When the men took off their shirts (a move that is always included in Man Dance), the whole audience applauded and erupted in peals of laughter.

Other dances included a plethora of hip-hop and pop songs with up beat choreography, with the occasional modern piece that exhibited Ebony’s more lyrical side.

Student choreographers Gustave Maisonrouge ’14 and Halah Mohammed ’14 created a hip-hop piece to “Save Your Goodbye” by Michael Posner. As effortlessly easy it looked on stage, Mainsonrouge said that it took lots of time practicing and choreographing to make it look as good as it did.

“It was time consuming,” he admitted. “But it was an even more rewarding process. I was lucky enough to share the responsibility of co-choreographing with Halah. We always fed off each other’s energy.

Indeed, all dancers from each piece looked like they were having a blast and enjoying their dance. It’s this sort of contagious energy and enthusiasm that makes Ebony such a popular extra-curricular activity for students to participate in and also for the rest of the student body to watch.

“Ebony II is an inclusive, loving, supportive community,” explained Iroz. “It allows me to take my mind off school, spend time with some great people and have fun doing something that I love: dance.”